Virus’s unseen hot zone: The American farm
Across the country, fruit growers blocked testing of seasonal
farmworkers and told those who caught the coronavirus to keep it
quiet. County and state officials were largely unable to stop them.
By
Laura Reiley <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/laura-reiley/>and
Beth Reinhard <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/beth-reinhard/>
Washington Post, September 24, 2020 at 7:01 p.m. EDT
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Workers at an orchard prepare to thin apple trees in Yakima County,
Wash. In early May, the county had the highest case rate of coronavirus
on the West Coast.
Workers at an orchard prepare to thin apple trees in Yakima County,
Wash. In early May, the county had the highest case rate of coronavirus
on the West Coast. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
InYakima County
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/09/coronavirus-washington-yakima-fruit-farm/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3>,
Wash., some fruit orchard owners declined on-site testing of workers by
health departments at the height of harvest season even as coronavirus
infections spiked. In Monterey, Calif., workers at some farms claimed
foremen asked them to hide positive diagnoses from other crew members.
And in Collier County, Fla., health officials did not begin widespread
testing of farmworkers until the end of harvest, at which point the
workers had already migrated northward.
At the height of harvest season, growers supplying some of America’s
biggest agricultural companies and grocery store chains flouted public
health guidelines to limit testing and obscure coronavirus outbreaks,
according to thousands of pages of state and local records reviewed by
The Washington Post.
At the same time, state agencies and growers were slow to determine how
and when to test workers, what protocols to adopt when workers tested
positive, and how to institute contact tracing, advocates say. They say
that there should have been mandatory personal protective equipment and
clear guidance on worker safety at the federal and state levels.
AD
Worker advocates say the failures put millions of workers at greater
risk of contracting and spreading the virus among themselves and to
other Americans as they crossed state lines to move with the harvest season.
Migrant farmworkers die in Canada, and Mexico wants answers
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/migrant-farmworkers-die-in-canada-and-mexico-wants-answers/2020/06/18/2e419766-b00a-11ea-8f56-63f38c990077_story.html?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_10>
The struggles to contain the virus among migrant farmworkers are
documented in internal state and county agriculture and health
department records, as well as email exchanges with farm bureaus, grower
associations, and public health and worker advocacy groups that were
obtained by theDocumenting COVID-19 project
<https://www.documentingcovid19.io/migrant>at Columbia University’s
Brown Institute for Media Innovation through public records requests and
shared with The Post. These documents and additional interviews by The
Post show a pattern that extended across more than a dozen agricultural
counties in 10 states — and that largely withstood officials’ attempts
to stop the spread of the virus among agricultural workers.
Laborers for Fresh Harvest arrive for their shift on April 28 in
Greenfield, Calif. Transportation has made it difficult for farmworkers
to socially distance themselves.
Laborers for Fresh Harvest arrive for their shift on April 28 in
Greenfield, Calif. Transportation has made it difficult for farmworkers
to socially distance themselves. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
“If this is an essential industry, why is it we can’t at least take the
kind of steps needed to figure out where we need to do interventions?”
asked Don Villarejo, a former researcher at the California Institute for
Rural Studies who has been analyzingcoronavirus data
<http://covid19farmworkerstudy.org/survey/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/EN-COFS-Preliminary-Data-Brief_FINAL.pdf>on
farmworkers. “My mantra is that all pandemics are local; if you don’t
track every aspect of people’s lives including where they work and where
they live, then you can never do a proper intervention."
AD
But the nature of America’s migrant labor system, which relies
onapproximately 220,000
<https://www.epi.org/publication/coronavirus-and-farmworkers-h-2a/>workers
on seasonal H-2A work visas and anotherestimated 1.5 million
<http://www.ciw-online.org/fwfactsheet.pdf>undocumented workers largely
from Mexico and other Latin American countries, leaves workers with few
protections and exposed to the virus, advocates say.
Trump’s latest immigration restriction exposes a key contradiction in
policy
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/23/trumps-latest-immigration-restriction-exposes-key-contradiction-policy/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_17>
Planting, harvesting and packing produce typically put farmworkers in
proximity with co-workers. Laborers often rely on employers for
transport, usually in vans and buses, and accommodation in crowded,
camp-style housing, according to Ed Kissam, a former California farm
labor researcher who has been tracking the impact of the coronavirus on
farmworker communities. And workers’ very transience, harvesting six
weeks here and eight weeks there, presents problems for tracing and
disincentives for local governments to invest in solutions; wait long
enough and seasonal workers become someone else’s problem.
The effects of the coronavirus frequently overlay a system in which
growers have routinely failed to protect workers while on the job —
offering them substandard transportation, housing and access to health
care and testing, Kissam said.
AD
“Virtually all are housed in congregate living situations, making them
extremely vulnerable to covid-19 transmission,” he said. “Typically, 40
to 80 percent of the people living in crowded living quarters —
congregate housing or individual crowded housing — will be infected by
others they live with once the infection is introduced from workplace or
community infection.”
Tracking the spread of the coronavirus among farmworkers is further
complicated by language barriers and worker mistrust of authorities,
Villarejo said. In addition, farm laborers are often afraid to get
tested for fear of being deported, losing their jobs or of being left
with large hospital bills.
During the covid-19 pandemic, immigrant farmworkers are heroes
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/31/during-covid-19-pandemic-immigrant-farmworkers-are-heroes/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_24>
Using Monterey County’s officialcoronavirus dashboard
<https://www.co.monterey.ca.us/Home/ShowDocument?id=88023>, Villarejo
found that as of July 1, agricultural workers in the county had 1,410
positive cases per 100,000 population, about three times the rate for
other workers, which was 455 cases per 100,000. He said he anticipates
the prevalence among farmworkers has increased substantially since then.
The Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, in
collaboration with Microsoft, estimates128,000 farmworkers
<https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2020/09/study-more-125000-farmworkers-have-contracted-covid-19>nationwide
have tested positive for the coronavirus, as of Sept. 24. But Jayson
Lusk, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue, says their
dashboard could be a dramatic undercount as it does not include
part-time and temporary workers.
Bienvenu Chengangu, who contracted the virus, works at the JBS
meatpacking facility in Greeley, Colo. The CDC has issued detailed
reports on such plants but says it has no plans to do so for farms.
(Chet Strange for The Washington Post)
Bienvenu Chengangu, who contracted the virus, works at the JBS
meatpacking facility in Greeley, Colo. The CDC has issued detailed
reports on such plants but says it has no plans to do so for farms.
(Chet Strange for The Washington Post)
By comparison, 42,988 meatpacking workers have tested positive for the
novel coronavirus in 498 meat plants as of Sept. 24, according to an
analysis by theFood and Environment Reporting Network
<https://thefern.org/2020/04/mapping-covid-19-in-meat-and-food-processing-plants/>,
a nonprofit investigative news organization. While the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention issued detailed reports on coronavirus
outbreaks in meatpacking plants, the agency has no immediate plans to
monitor infections among farmworkers. “At this time we are not tracking
outbreaks in farmworkers or on farms,” CDC spokeswoman Jasmine Reed said
in July.
More than 200 meat plant workers in the U.S. have died of covid-19.
Federal regulators just issued two modest fines.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/osha-covid-meat-plant-fines/2020/09/13/1dca3e14-f395-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_29>
Eleven states (California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, New York,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin)
have introduced mandatory protections for farmworkers during the
pandemic that include providing PPE and requiring physical distancing,
workplace disinfection and worker testing. Many issued recommendations
only after seeing significant outbreaks among farmworkers in their
states. Twenty states have issued nonenforceable guidance, and 19
states, including Florida and Texas, have issued no recommendations.
AD
In early May, Washington state’s Yakima County, one of the
nation’sbiggest suppliers
<https://extension.wsu.edu/yakima/crop-production/#:~:text=Vegetable%20Crops&text=Yakima%20County%20is%20the%20leading%20producer%20of%20squash%20(summer%20and,snap%20beans%2C%20cucumbers%20and%20tomatoes.>of
sweet cherries, apples and pears, had thehighest case rate
<https://covid.idmod.org/data/Comparing_COVID-19_dynamics_in_King_and_Yakima_counties.pdf>on
the West Coast, and state officials urged several farms experiencing
outbreaks to test all employees. Yet growers resisted widespread
coronavirus testing, according to internal emails between Yakima Health
District chief executive Ryan Ibach and Environmental Health Director
Shawn Magee.
“Our people aren’t interested in being tested,” Jeannette Evans, owner
of Evans Fruit, one of the biggest apple orchards in the state, told The
Washington Post, adding that health officials “didn’t like it because an
old lady stood up to them.” She said her workers are “good Spanish
people,” many of whom have worked for the farm for years.
Evans was blunt when Magee inquired about testing by email, a certified
letter and phone calls between June 4 and June 17.
AD
“She said we are not to enter her properties and will not participate in
site visits or testing … then [she] hung up on me,” Magee wrote. Magee
told The Washington Post he reported Evans Fruit to the state labor
department, which enforces workplace safety rules.
Movie theater popcorn sales have tanked, prompting American popcorn
farmers to find new markets
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2020/09/18/movie-theater-popcorn-pandemic/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_39>
Evans, who began farming in 1949 with her late husband, told The Post
only 10 of her workers had been infected with the virus by mid-July.
However, Yakima Health District records of coronavirus cases among her
farmworkers showed 72 positive cases out of a workforce of 350 people
across three locations as of Aug. 12.
On July 13, Evans allowed health officials to inspect the farms. They
found workers wearing masks incorrectly, no hand-washing stations
outside the bathrooms and no daily health screenings of employees,
public records show. The Yakima Health District report said: “Received
anonymous complaint from worker on day of consultation that they were
being told to wear a mask because of the inspection even though they had
not been wearing one for 4 months.”
AD
The Yakima Health District set up a free testing site across from the
Evans Fruit location in Cowiche, “as they have a very high case count of
covid-19,″ Magee wrote in a July 23 email. “Only one employee out of
over 300 showed up for testing.”
Some farms tried to minimize the extent of coronavirus outbreaks among
their workers. Other farms asked health officials to attribute outbreaks
to other units of their company. According to Yakima Health District
internal emails, Allan Bros. has had 42 cases of coronavirus among its
workers as of Aug. 12. The company requested that a subset of cases be
listed instead under the name Sagemoor Group Management Services, the
company’s vineyard.
Allen Bros. did not respond to requests for comment.
Espinoza Clara reaches to pull honey crisp apples off the vine at an
orchard in Yakima.
Espinoza Clara reaches to pull honey crisp apples off the vine at an
orchard in Yakima. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
***
Florida’s spring harvest made the state the earliest test ground for
vulnerabilities among fruit and vegetable pickers. Farmworker advocacy
groups say county health officials were slow to grasp the spread of
infection and fatalities in farmworker populations, in part because
hospital officials and medical examiners did not consistently collect
data by occupation or race.
AD
The medical examiner’s office for the heavily agricultural Lee, Hendry
and Glades counties identified only four deaths in the Hispanic racial
group in March and April, despite many Hispanic surnames among the list
of dead. The counties recorded 188 coronavirus deaths between March 5
and July 16.
Latinos hit hard by coronavirus, but Chicago suggests it’s even worse
than it looks
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/latinos-hit-hard-by-coronavirus-but-chicago-suggests-its-even-worse-than-it-looks/2020/07/10/a4ae1b62-bfa6-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_53>
When asked why race/ethnicity and occupation are not tracked, the
medical examiner’s office for Lee, Hendry and Glades counties said in a
statement: “The information entered into the medical examiner’s database
is based on information the medical examiner’s office receives from the
reporters of the death.”
Advocates say Hispanics were also undercounted in neighboring Collier
County, a heavily agricultural area. By the end of May, Immokalee, a
farming community in the county, had more than 1,000 positive cases, one
of the highest infection rates in the state, according to state health
department statistics.
AD
“Since we have been using the medical examiner’s data to confirm known
individuals who have died, we know that just about everyone we’ve
confirmed in Immokalee is in fact Indigenous Mayan or Latino, but they
are listed as White,” said Marley Monacello, a staff member with the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
According to Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a coalition leader, the organization
wrote to the Collier County Board of County Commissioners on March 23
and to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and 14 others on April 2, laying
out the risks to farmworkers. There was no response from the governor or
board; they heard back only from a staff member of one state
representative, Monacello said.
A tomato field in Florida. The spring harvest made the state the
earliest test ground for vulnerabilities among fruit and vegetable pickers.
A tomato field in Florida. The spring harvest made the state the
earliest test ground for vulnerabilities among fruit and vegetable
pickers. (Forest Woodward/Coalition of Immokalee Workers)
/“/Nearly every suggestion we gave about how to meet the needs of the
farmworker community — from early community-wide testing, to effective
health education, the need for contact tracing and isolation areas apart
from overcrowded housing — was met with initial rejection and delay,”
Reyes Chavez said.
“The Governor’s Office receives correspondence from dozens of groups and
organizations daily. Responding to each and every one is simply not
feasible,” the governor’s press secretary, Cody McCloud, said in an
email. “The DeSantis Administration has supported Florida’s farmworkers
throughout the covid-19 pandemic."
County commissioner Bill McDaniel Jr. says a lack of testing has been
less of a problem than the county’s ability to deal with positive cases,
which he said frequently hinges on a worker’s documentation status.
“If they test positive, they know they are staring at quarantining and
self-isolation and they need to have that paycheck,” he said. “We’ve had
300 people slip back to whatever crack they came from, off to parts
unknown. They don’t give the right phone number or the right address.”
Migrant farmworkers, many coronavirus positive, move north from Florida
to other states
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/11/migrant-farmworkers-many-who-have-tested-positive-covid-19-move-north-florida-other-farm-states/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_65>
Collier County health officials twice turned down offers from Partners
in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit health-care organization, to conduct
contact tracing in Immokalee, according to Matthew Hing, a doctor with
the organization that has had success incontact tracing
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/contact-tracing-is-best-tool-we-have-until-theres-a-vaccine-say-health-experts/2020/06/13/94f42ffa-a73b-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_66>in
Massachusetts.
Kristine Hollingsworth, public information officer for the Florida
Department of Health in Collier County, said the offers were declined
because any group that assisted in contact-tracing efforts would need to
become a background-screened volunteer of the agency or a contracted
agency approved by the Florida Department of Health.
Testing of farmworkers did not ramp up until June. By that time, much of
the Florida growing season was over and many seasonal farmworkers were
on the move.
“By then the state had successfullysent the problem
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/11/migrant-farmworkers-many-who-have-tested-positive-covid-19-move-north-florida-other-farm-states/?itid=lk_inline_manual_69>up
north,” said Robin Lewy of the Rural Women’s Health Project. “It was
shushed and covered up. We didn’t think about the farmworkers because
it’s convenient to forget them.”
***
People work at a strawberry field on April 15 in Santa Paula, Calif.
Some farmworkers in the state have complained that their employers did
not provide them with personal protective equipment.
People work at a strawberry field on April 15 in Santa Paula, Calif.
Some farmworkers in the state have complained that their employers did
not provide them with personal protective equipment. (Marcio Jose
Sanchez/AP)
In California, some growers threatened to retaliate against workers who
complained about a lack of masks and other PPE or overcrowding in
hotels, according to emails between the Monterey County Health
Department and advocacy groups. A. Irene de Barraicua, a spokesperson
for Lideres Campesinas, a California women’s farmworker network, says
very few workers want to be publicly identified because “they are scared
of retaliation, of losing work and of being deported. If they show up in
a news story they are losing their jobs.”
She said she has spoken to workers who have been threatened with firing
or eviction after speaking up about a lack of PPE, and that workers have
been told to hide positive diagnoses from fellow workers.
Hundreds of growers continued to operate through April without seeking
PPE for their workers, according to a spreadsheet and memo sent by the
California Department of Food and Agriculture to the state’s county
governments in early May.
The female labor pioneer who battled grape growers and sexism
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/09/07/labor-day-dolores-huerta-farm-workers/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_75>
The
state<https://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/Coronavirus/COVID-19-Infection-Prevention-in-Agriculture.pdf>later
partnered with county agriculture commissioners to distribute millions
of surgical masks and other PPE to agricultural workers. As wildfires
raged early in September, resulting in hazardous air quality,
farmworkers kept working. The state distributed millions of N95 masks.
Some farms that supply major name-brand fruit and vegetable companies
threatened to fire or deport workers who complained about safety and
asked for better screening and temperature checks, said Hazel Davalos,
the community organizing director at the Central Coast Alliance United
for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) who has interviewed multiple farmworkers.
In early May, about 100 farmworkers at Rancho Laguna Farms in Santa
Maria, a farming community near Santa Barbara that houses
approximately2,000 H-2A visa
<https://santamariatimes.com/news/local/farmworker-dies-14-infected-in-covid-19-outbreak-at-santa-maria-h-2a-housing-sites/article_9037fb57-167f-54ee-b597-4cc76625ff18.html>workers
each summer to pick strawberries and other crops, went on strike to
complain about pandemic work safety and insufficient hazard pay. On May
11, CAUSE filed an unfair labor practice charge with the California
Agricultural Labor Relations Board on behalf of the workers, alleging
that the company fired some of the striking workers and threatened to
call immigration officials, Davalos said.
The Agricultural Labor Relations Board is investigating complaints that
Rancho Laguna Farms laid off workers who complained, according to
Franchesca Herrera, the board’s regional director.
Like many smaller strawberry growers in Santa Maria, Rancho Laguna
Farmssells its fruit
<https://www.driscolls.com/rancho-laguna-farms-update>to Driscoll’s,
which controls about one-third of the $6 billion U.S. berry market.
“We cannot comment on any ongoing and pending investigations,” said
Rancho Laguna Farms spokeswoman Jesse Rojas by email. She said that as
of Aug. 28, 20 workers had tested positive for the coronavirus, and 18
of them had returned to work with written authorization from a medical
professional or the county health department.
“All employees who were under test result waiting period or who tested
positive were eligible for leave under the Federal Families First
Coronavirus Response Act,” she wrote.
From ranch to kitchen table
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/2020/07/17/coronavirus-restaurants-farm-ranch/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_83>
On July 7, Leodegario Chavez, 51, a driver for Alco Harvesting, which
contracts to bring in about 1,000 of the area’s guest workers, died of
covid-19. Residing in Alco Harvesting’s housing accommodations for their
H-2A workers in a Motel 6, he was the first agricultural worker in Santa
Maria to die of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Another
coronavirus-positive guest worker for Alco Harvesting, who spoke to
advocates on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, posted
on a site called Tu Tiempo Digital that more than 20
coronavirus-positive workers were being quarantined at the motel and
that he had been in the room next to the deceased.
The day after his posts, he said, he was fired and kicked out of the
motel. By July 29, there were 85 confirmed cases linked to the outbreak
at Alco Harvesting in Santa Maria, according to the county health
department. Alco Harvesting did not respond to requests for comment.
Driscoll’s said in a statement that it has helped growers access PPE
including masks, and that its growers have been responsive to input from
the company as well as county officials on meeting the CDC agriculture
guidelines. To date, there hasn’t been a circumstance that has resulted
in a need to terminate a grower relationship, the company said.
“Our independent grower network has not had any significant problems
with outbreaks,” the statement said. “We’vebeen proactive
<https://www.driscolls.com/protecting-essential-workers>and worked
diligently to help our independent growers first and foremost meet the
CDC’s agriculture guidelines.”
/Georgia Gee, a data journalist for the//Stabile Center for
Investigative Journalism/
<https://journalism.columbia.edu/ms-investigative-specialization>/at the
Columbia Journalism School, contributed research to this report./
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